


Romantics in a magnolia tree

by mercuryhatter



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Drabble, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-17
Updated: 2013-04-17
Packaged: 2017-12-08 17:36:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/764118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuryhatter/pseuds/mercuryhatter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jehan brainstorms in a tree; Bahorel helps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Romantics in a magnolia tree

“As much as I admire the sentiment of sitting where one is not allowed for the sheer joy of it, I suspect that you, Jehan Prouvaire, have a rather more artistic reason for your current perch?” Bahorel called up, shading his eyes with one hand to spot the poet sitting in the magnolia tree above him. For once, he was rather hard to spot, as he was dressed entirely in shades of green, and wore several magnolia buds in his hair.

“Bahorel!” Jehan called back, pleased at his arrival. “Hello, yes, I am writing the tragic love story of this very tree, as it happens. Would you like to join me? I seem to be having some trouble with the particulars.”

Bahorel pulled himself easily into the tree, situating himself behind Jehan and the papers he had tacked to the branches around him.

“This tree has a tragic love story?” he queried, resting his chin on Jehan’s shoulder to read what he had written so far b

“Well, specifically, the dryad within the tree,” Jehan murmured distractedly, tapping his pencil on his chin, where a thick grey mark was developing already from the habit.

“Do imported magnolias have dryads?”

“Oh, yes, all trees have dryads,” Jehan said, as if it were an obvious fact and Bahorel’s question was simply testing his knowledge.

“Ah, of course. And who is she in love with?”

“Well, that’s the problem, you see; I can’t decide.”

“Hmm. Dryads usually go for the Greek hunter type, I should think. Or don’t I remember something about them and Artemis?”

“That was nymphs,” Jehan corrected. “But I don’t want her story to be /usual./ She’s an American tree residing in France, there’s nothing /usual/ about her. She deserves something shocking, something… Ha!” Jehan was the only person Bahorel knew who actually exclaimed out loud when he’d figured something out. “She is in love… with Death.”

To be fair, Bahorel should have expected this, especially after being dragged into the catacombs on multiple occasions to search for skulls (which Jehan had fully intended to use for wine before Joly had confiscated them, nearly apoplectic at the suggestion, and replaced them all with plaster casts). But, having been spinning a rather nice tale in his own head about a dryad separated from her planter lover in New Orleans, he still found himself taken aback by Jehan’s decision.

“With…?”

“Yes, with Death, a tall, genderless being with skin as pale as starlight and with the same faint luster, eyes like obsidian, wings like rips in the sky— no! Wings like stained glass! I refuse to believe that Death has not a spot of color. Wings like stained glass, and this dryad, rooted in place to her tree, watches Death go about Death’s business and slowly, she falls irrevocably in love with such a steadfast presence. This, she thinks, is a being who would not die before me, like so many others I’ve watched come and go, no, she will be the one to take /me/, instead, and how lovely to never be parted from one’s love! And so-“

As Jehan orated wildly, he quite forgot that he was in possession of paper and pencil at all; he waved around one sheet for emphasis, but wrote nothing. Bahorel, accustomed to this habit, and also to the dismay that always followed it (because Jehan could never remember to his satisfaction exactly what he’d said when he went on like this), carefully liberated one of the pages from its brach, leaned back against the trunk of their fair magnolia, and began to take notes as Jehan spun the tale out before them.


End file.
